AIG (ticker: AIG) balked at Tucker's overture. In fact, it accepted no bids at all. But two years later, the world had changed, and by mid-2010 Tucker was steering AIA (1299.Hong Kong) through the third-largest initial public offering ever at the time, which gave AIG some $20.5 billion to repay loans to the U.S. government. AIA, now worth $35 billion, is still one-third-owned by AIG. That's a fact of more than passing interest, since U.S. taxpayers technically own 77% of AIG.

Freed from AIG, Hong Kong-based AIA, the world's largest Pan-Asian insurer, has great prospects. It is outside slow-growth Japan, in markets whose citizens are becoming vastly richer and need vehicles for saving. "This crisis advanced Asia 10 years, and put the West back 10 years," says Tucker. "It remains the Asian century. The gap between here and there seems to be widening."

Moreover, Asia is underinsured. "The competitive environment is about increasing the size of the insurance pie, not fighting for the next piece of it," Tucker says. "There is plenty for all good companies in the region. We have great opportunities and potential. We are 100% retail and 100% Asia. If you want a pure play on the retail consumer in financial services in Asia, there is no other company."

Tucker believes AIA, now the fifth-largest insurer, will one day become the world's biggest.

EVEN BEFORE HE BECAME CEO, Tucker had set his sights on AIA, with good reason. It was the model for Prudential's operations in Asia, which Tucker began building just a few years after joining the British insurer (no relation to Prudential Financial of the U.S.), after his first job as an accountant trainee. Tucker instantly saw why it was so successful. AIA was founded in 1919, and had a vaunted sales force that was among Asia's most productive.

Supported by his mentor, Prudential's then-CEO Mick Newmarch, Tucker went on to run the U.S. operation, but Asia was never far from his mind. Several years later he returned to Hong Kong to run Pru's Asia division. In 2003, Tucker left Pru without a job, apparently stymied by the lack of upward mobility. Soon after, the company's chief was ousted after he tried to buy American General in the U.S., and the share price took a dive. Tucker was rehired, this time as CEO.

Tucker immediately set about soothing disgruntled investors, repairing relationships with executives and sales agents, cutting costs, and selling off Pru's Internet bank. Then came the AIG debacle. Wounded after an accounting scandal and the financial crisis, when its portfolio of toxic derivatives nearly caused its collapse, AIG was looking to unload assets. A team led by Tucker began working around the clock to assess AIA.

FAMOUSLY DETAIL-ORIENTED, Tucker is said to be a CEO who can get an investment-banking proposal at 7 p.m. on Friday and annotate it through page 250 by mid-morning Saturday. He reportedly was prepared to pay as much as $20 billion for AIA, but AIG management wasn't willing to let it go. In 2009, after four years as Pru's CEO, Tucker announced "an entirely personal" decision to move on. But he also said he had "one more big job in [him]."

Early in 2010, Tidjane Thiam, Pru's new CEO—and part of the team that analyzed AIA in 2008—decided to try to buy AIA for $35.5 billion. Thiam came under fire for overbidding; in any event, the deal collapsed that June, and cost Pru nearly $650 million in penalties and fees.

AIG's only option at that point was to take AIA public. It owed billions to the New York Fed. AIG chief Robert Benmosche needed a new CEO, because AIA's boss had no experience running a public company. Out of the blue, Tucker contacted Benmosche, and at a meeting in Switzerland, AIG's forceful leader was instantly impressed: "He clearly understood we had to transform the system that [had] worked for decades to one that recognized it had matured, the middle class had matured and the middle class had a lot more money. It needed a much more productive, professional agent. And frankly, I needed somebody who was a known figure, who could say to the investing public, 'I know what it takes to build a great company.' "

When Tucker finally took over AIA, uncertainty about the parent company and its new owner, the U.S. government, had lines of customers standing outside agents' offices, demanding to know if their policies were safe. The CEO and chief financial officer had just left. AIA's sales force was getting skittish. The number of AIA Hong Kong agents in the Million Dollar Round Table, an association of top-performing insurance agents, had fallen 50%.

Rivals had poached people, and other sales channels were gaining ground, including banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, and national behemoths such as Bangkok Life Assurance, China Life and Ping An Insurance. "AIA, now with a new identity, has to put things back on track," says Patricia Cheng, an insurance analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Hong Kong.

TUCKER, CELEBRATED FOR HIS WORK ethic and his bottomless belief in the company's sales agents, is well-suited to the job—a circumstance that stems in large part from his experience as a professional soccer player in his youth, playing for minor teams, and as a member of a weekend soccer league for over-35s. He frequently plays center forward, a position informally called "the striker." The position requires timing, opportunism, and calculated risk-taking. The striker scores the goals. When he scores consistently, he is universally loved.

As a player, Tucker combined speed, agility and a total lack of fear, says David Kyte, a London friend who played on the same team for 15 years. "He would never miss a training session and his commitment to the team was second to none," says Kyte. "He would not think twice about putting his own body on the line for the team."

His meeting with Barron's doesn't start auspiciously. It's pouring in Manhattan, and the reporter is waiting in the wrong conference room. Tucker is tall, with sandy hair and a ruddy color, and his face is edged with fatigue. He has a young family and travels incessantly, and is in New York to sell the AIA story to investors. He looks like a mature, heavier version of Ron Weasley, the young wizard in the Harry Potter films. You get the feeling that, confronted with a reporter, he wants to cry, "accio expelliarmus"—a spell designed to knock people on their backs.

Indeed, Tucker is notorious for hating chitchat. Yet he quickly warms to the situation, telling Barron's, "Football taught me teamwork, and to know that you're as strong as your weakest member. It taught discipline and focus. It taught rigor. It taught commitment and passion."

That view came in handy even before the IPO, when Tucker had to revive the AIA sales force. He tirelessly visited agents to acknowledge the year had been tough, and to reassure them that AIG was still alive. He schmoozed them, exhorted them, congratulated them. He visited them at work, special events, conferences, group dinners. Some were agents whose families had worked for AIG for generations.

Then, there are the giant conferences. People used to a stern mien marvel at Tucker's sudden transformation before a crowd, when he electrifies thousands of agents while speaking from a few bullet points. Admittedly, part of the excitement derives from the glamour of the visiting CEO. "They respond to the genuine affection and respect I feel for them," Tucker says modestly.

Still, "he knows the real worth of the agency force and how to talk a language the agency likes," says Mitchell Todd, the global insurance expert at T. Rowe Price in London, who has known Tucker for years. "For the agents, his joining AIA means they will have a wider product footprint."

Tucker upgraded the agency, moving to increase the percentage of active agents—those who sell enough policies to work at AIA full-time—and rolled out new, higher-margin policies they could sell. He supplied training to sell the new policies, including protection insurance and Islamic-market products.

At the IPO, change was in the air. Tucker was required to approve riders for agents who wanted to buy AIA shares. Some riders that crossed his desk were from senior agents once rumored to be bolting for a rival. "I think they felt they could influence the future, that they were involved in the future of the organization," says Tucker.

Tucker also rejuvenated management ranks, hiring an array of former Pru colleagues, including Ng Keng Hooi to run Thailand, the Philippines, India and Taiwan; Thanh Phong Huynh to oversee Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Brunei; and Bill Lisle as chief distribution officer. Other new managers are helping AIA make inroads into channels such as banks.

THE IPO, TUCKER SAYS, "drew a line in the sand between the volatility of the past and the future. It gave agents, customers and employees enormous security on the basis of being in a quoted company that is financially strong and well-placed, and has a terrific brand."

In the first half of 2011, the value of new business—a metric Tucker likes since it differentiates from legacy business—jumped 32%. Across key markets, agent productivity rose sharply, widening profit margins. In Hong Kong, agent productivity rose 20%; the number of active agents rose 9%. In Thailand, the value of new business jumped 51% and agent productivity by 20%. In China, new business was up 47%, and the number of active agents rose 38%. In Singapore, new business rose 59%. In Malaysia, he joined up with Alliance Bank Malaysia to offer Islamic products. Mostly, though, the units are wholly owned. In Guangzhou, China, where AIA had been losing share, it won the No. 1 position for agency sales from Ping An. As for finances, AIA's solvency ratio—income to debt—is a high 356%. The company has $3.5 billion in cash. In July, it declared its first dividend.

AIA's stock could be worth far more that its current price of 22.45 Hong Kong dollars (US$2.88). Assuming capital markets behave themselves and the Chinese economy stays healthy, bulls think it could double in five years.

There are challenges ahead, and possible acquisitions. But Tucker has ruled them out for now, saying "organic growth is the path for us." There is plenty of that to be had.